Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Art-Rite magazine and Edit DeAk

Edit DeAk, Walter Robinson, and Joshua Cohn met in an art criticism class taught by Brian O'Doherty at Barnard College in New York, in 1972. The following year they began publishing Art-Rite, a forerunner to the punk/art ‘zine of the latter half of that decade. The publication was printed on newsprint and espoused a decidedly insider (though often anonymous) point of view. Each issue was given over entirely to an artist, a collective or a theme.

What made Art-Rite so unique, deAk told Artforum in 2003, was its “whole new tone and attitude. It was unheard of to have a sense of humor at the time, or not to be talking about ‘the problem’ of art—the problem of this, the problem of that.”

"We were riding on the absurdity of the situation—that we were three nobodies, had no money, had no fame, and didn’t know anybody in the art world. But it was perfect—we were totally free,” said deAk in 1974.

After the 21st issue (actually nineteenth) in 1978, the periodical folded. "It petered out. We kind of ran out of money," said Robinson. "It's just one of those things. We never really made any money out of it and it had just run it's course."

DeAk adds "We were getting older. We were not making any money, we had to work all the time and I just got tired". She went on to contribute to Artforum, Interview, ZG, Art Random, and many other publications, writing about Dennis Oppenheim, Hanne Darboven, Cookie Mueller, Cindy Sherman and others.

DeAk died last week at the age of 68.

“RIP my brilliant 70s collaborator who emerged from the Hungarian waves (via car trunk at the Yugoslavian border) with her equally brilliant husband Peter Grass, to rehab a 3500 sq ft loft on the top floor of 149 Wooster St into a center of fun and DIY culture, where she presided as guiding spirit over the launch of Art-Rite magazine and so many other endeavors, including curating the first performance art festival at Artists Space, then next door, and overseeing its first graffiti art show (I think) and co-founding Printed Matter.”

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Dedicated to Artists’ books, multiples, recordings, postcards, magazines and ephemera, this site will feature reviews of recent titles, features on artists and publishers, random listings of older works, the occasional longer essay or interview, straight-forward pictorials,links to recent news, etc. etc., in an attempt to create an aggregate of information on editioned artworks.

About Me

Dave Dyment is an artist, writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-editor of "One for Me and One to Share: Artists Multiples and Editions" (YYZ Books, 2012). His own work can be viewed at www.dave-dyment.com. He is represented by MKG127.